revmatt

Three days into our vacation the laptop started freezing. Since the whole reason we brought it with us to the beach was so that my lovely wife could be among the first to register for sessions at a conference I placed getting it working high on the priority list. So during naptimes and after the babies went to bed I spent some time working on it. I quickly reduced it to being a hard drive problem of sorts. Fortunately we were vacationing in San Diego, in the Land of Fry's Electronics.

My brother and brother-in-law had ventured there on day two in order to get an Airport Express so we'd have wireless connectivity instead of a single hardwired network link. See? I'm not the only geek in my family. I will also note that my nephew was spending his downtime learning PyGame, which I was rather pleased with as Python is my language of choice.

Not having any tools or install media with me I picked up Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) as well as a multi-head screwdriver with torx bits and an 80G PATA drive. For good measure I grabbed a USB/IDE adapter in the hopes that I could recover my profiles from the dying drive. I at least was able to back up the critical user files to a jump drive.

Taking apart an iBook is not for the faint of heart, as I discovered. I followed the 13 pages of instructions at ifixit.com and managed to only end up with some ugly dings to the case, a dozen or so spare screws, and a battery pack that doesn't quite seat completely so if I'm not careful when I pick it up I lose power. Nothing a little duct tape can't fix. But now I'm on Leopard and adapting to the differences. Some good, some annoying. I'm most interested in trying out Time Machine, and in that vein I finally got around to setting up a network backup drive off the recoverable backup, haven't you?

Listening to: Alligator Skin - Tilly and the Wall

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